Over the past few years, consumers have embraced digital technology. Consumer acceptance has been driven by the availability of services such as high-speed links to the Internet, wired and wireless home networks, and the growth of digital cafés offering a variety of opportunities for social interaction and services. Consumer acceptance has also been driven by the availability of a wide range of digital technology products such as laptop computers, hand-held computers, digital cell phones, video and audio recording and/or playback devices. The widespread acceptance and use of digital technologies has led to a high demand for seamless, transparent connectivity, communication and interoperability between the respective digital devices, and between the respective digital devices and available services that enhance the usefulness of the respective digital devices and/or facilitate their use.
The ability to dynamically organize wireless electronic devices into infrastructure mode and ad-hoc mode wireless networks holds promise for meeting user demands for seamless, transparent connectivity and interoperability between digital devices and between digital devices and available services. However, existing infrastructure mode and ad-hoc mode network implementations are overly complex and burdensome and fall short of meeting user needs. Existing infrastructure mode and ad-hoc mode networks, e.g., such as infrastructure mode and ad-hoc mode networks based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, require a level of complexity that increases device processing and memory requirements, increases device production costs, and decreases operational efficiency. Further, existing peer-to-peer and ad-hoc networks have characteristics that prevent the effective use of existing layer 3 IP address assignment and service discovery techniques. For example, some existing peer-to-peer and ad-hoc networks rely on IP address assignments made using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), but a DHCP server may not be available in dynamic networks. Other existing peer-to-peer and ad-hoc networks may implement a local addressing mechanism that requires the use of multicast network services, however, multicast transmissions will not always reach all the devices in dynamic peer-to-peer and ad hoc networks.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide approaches for implementing infrastructure mode and ad-hoc mode networks between wireless digital devices that provide seamless, transparent connectivity and interoperability between digital devices and available services, yet reduce device hardware requirements, reduce device complexity and production costs, and improve operational efficiency.